Over the summer I saw an article from Make Magazine about making your own laundry detergent.  While we’re talking about eating healthy on a budget, this is a nice time to talk about a slightly different way to save some money at the grocery store.  (On a non-food item of course, but still might be a part of your grocery budget.)

I like to buy the more earth friendly, natural brands of household cleaning products (Seventh Generation, Ecos, Citra Solv are a few of my favorite brands) for both the environmental and health concerns.  These natural cleaning products are typically more expensive than commercial brands and can quickly increase your grocery bill.  Much like saving money on preparing your own food – making your own cleaning products at home can totally pay off too.

I’ve recently been bitten by the Pinterest bug (I resisted for a long time!) and this pin about 44 Healthy Foods Under $1 from Greatist caught my attention.

Eating Healthy on a Budget

[image source: Greatist]

I can often find flaws in lists like these, but I have to admit – this one is a pretty good.  And I hear this question a lot too, “How can I eat healthy without spending a lot of money?”  Whether you’re a college student, feeding a family on one income or just don’t have a big grocery budget, there are definitely ways to eat well (taking both nutrition and taste into consideration) without breaking the bank.

Healthy Oatmeal Pumpkin Snack Cookies

December 19th, 2013 | Posted by Alison Spath in Healthy Snack Attack - (Comments Off on Healthy Oatmeal Pumpkin Snack Cookies)

I’m calling these cookies “healthy” because a.) they aren’t loaded with sugar and b.) they contain squash.

(Well, pumpkin – but pumpkin is a squash last time I checked.  Consider this your homeschooling lesson of the day.)

They are sweetened only with banana and a little maple syrup, which makes them low enough in sugar that I feel I can throw the word “snack” into the title as well, while also keeping my conscience clear.

Healthy Oatmeal Pumpkin Maple Cookies

I whipped these together yesterday morning using this banana oatmeal cookie recipe as my starting point, subbing pumpkin for flour and using maple syrup instead of white sugar.

Recipe for a Clean House

November 27th, 2013 | Posted by Alison Spath in Motivation - (5 Comments)

I love to live in a neat and tidy house, but naturally-neat-and-tidy I am not.  Items collect on our dining room table, clothes gather on furniture, colored pencils and drawings scatter like plastic bags in a windstorm.  In a perfect world I would stay on top it of regularly – but the reality is that I get behind and end up needing to devote time to picking up and cleaning.

I feel like the Slobbiest McSlobberson to admit this, so I take comfort in messy house memes because it leads me believe I am not alone.

Messy House Prayer

I’ve had a number of conversations with some friends and family about breakfast recently, and so I decided to put together a collection of morning food photos from the past few months.  Once upon a time I ate overnight oats for breakfast every day!  As I’ve mentioned more than once lately, I’m going the grain free route most of the time and don’t even miss my beloved oats, cold cereal or cinnamon raisin Ezekiel toast with almond butter and banana.

(This [sorta scary] blog post is a good but lengthy explanation of why I’ve chosen to follow a mostly grain free lifestyle.  The Paleo Solution, Wheat Belly and The Primal Blueprint are loaded with convincing info and studies too.)

This is my new mantra when it comes to getting stuff done around the house:

Done is Better Than Perfect

(even this image is not perfect, but I’m leaving it!  It’s done!)

One day last week I was feeling particularly frustrated with how far behind I was on the house work. Life with a busy, active, won’t-stop-climbing-the-tables-and-chairs toddler makes things… interesting.

There was a pile of dishes in the sink, pots and pan on the counter, more kitchen clutter and dishes on the other counter, the floor was dirty – the mess was driving me nuts and I just couldn’t get to it with Monkey Boy Kaz in the kitchen with me.  I’m also sure I was procrastinating because I felt so buried by it all I didn’t even know where to start.

This outdoor pool is one mile from our house.  A house that we’ve lived in for almost four years and we’re just now getting our butts over there to take advantage of it.  It even meets the “Three C’s” (that I just made up) – Close, Clean and Cheap.  Don’t ask me what took us so long, I have no idea.

Outdoor Pool

Have you heard of Cuppow?

Cuppow

It’s a drinkable lid that you can use with a canning jar.

(I think I’ve made it obvious that we like to drink out of canning jars here?)

I love canning jars as glasses mostly because they’re so sturdy – when the girls were really little I was frustrated with how frequently regular glasses were breaking.  I soon noticed that the few small and wide mouth canning jars we had hanging around were the only glasses that were holding up.  I eventually stopped replacing our broken glasses altogether and just used canning jars and old almond butter jars instead.  Soon, our entire glasswear collection consisted of glasses with threading at the top.  Oops.

A very good friend of mine left a question on Facebook last week about butter and if there was some way to make it more spreadable.

Dear Ali,

I have started using “real” butter because someone has opened my eyes to the benefits of it.

(and really, I didn’t need much pushing. Here, eat this creamy tastiness! OK!)

Any tips on how to make it more spreadable? I know some people leave it out on a butter plate thing, but since it’s just me and my man, we don’t use that much butter and seems like it would go bad before we used it all.

I have a confession.

The kitchen is not always clean before we go to bed at night.

This has been especially true this week with a husband who was laid up with a man cold. I’m picking on him a little, but we really are a team when it comes to keeping this house clean.  His sick time was evident based on state of the house for a number of days here, I fell way behind on the house work.

Now that we are outnumbered in our parents:kids ratio, our former man-to-man combat plan has become more of a “zone defense” over these past 7 months.